Thursday, May 28, 2009

Yes we can, too

“Oo, kaya rin natin ito!”

One of two Filipinos in Canada now calls the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) home. There are about 200,000 Filipinos living in the GTA, the fourth largest visible minority group behind the Chinese, Indian and Black communities. Tagalog is the seventh most-spoken language in the city of Toronto.

Yet, we don’t have a single Filipino elected in the halls of political power in the city of Toronto. The Chinese, Indian and Black communities have broken the glass ceiling. They have representatives in the city council and in the provincial and federal parliaments as well.

Not that we’re scared of joining the political fray. Others have tried in the past but failed.

If Filipinos in the province of Manitoba and the city of Winnipeg can rally behind Filipino candidates and elect them to higher office, why can’t Filipino Torontonians do the same?

“It is not that Filipinos do not care about politics, yet many are struggling for daily survival to become actively involved in organizations,” says Cecilia Diocson, executive director of the National Alliance of Philippine Women in Canada.

Diocson argues that the individual hardships faced by many Filipinos in Toronto reflect their overall community’s economic and social marginalization in Canada. She blames the Canadian government’s policy of exploiting cheap labour such as live-in caregivers and temporary foreign workers, mostly in retail, construction, tourism and restaurant jobs.

Because of the exodus of Filipinos through the Live-in Caregiver Program, Diocson further argues that many Filipino professionals have been trapped, stalling their integration and development in Canada. Majority of Filipino professionals have also not been able to accredit their professional education and work experience due to “systemic and racist barriers,” Diocson says.

Nonetheless Diocson has noticed the surging interest and enthusiasm of Filipino migrant workers, youth and immigrants in engaging in the economic, political, social and cultural life of Canada, as evidenced by their participation in various activities sponsored by Filipino advocacy groups. Her hopes rest on Filipino youth to continue the Filipino community’s struggle towards genuine equality and development in Canada.

Instead of criticizing our community organizations and their goals, a Filipino community leader has suggested that we should form a new organization to build our political clout and help elect Filipinos in higher office. This kind of observation, however, could defeat the very objective or purpose it is designed to serve because it immediately dodges the civic responsibility of every existing Filipino community organization to help initiate change within our community through democratic participation and community empowerment. Worse, it engenders the further trivialization and degradation of our community organizations into mere purveyors of banal activities like singing and beauty contests, festive celebrations, and social partying that do not promote our integration and involvement in Canada’s political life. Not that fellowship and partying are unnecessary in our lives, but too much focus on these activities may detract us from pursuing the more serious tasks of citizenry, of engaging in community activities as empowered, purposeful participants.

Do we really need a new organization to help us build our political clout?

During the height of the displeasure of the community against the alleged abuses of a federal MP towards two Filipino caregivers, a prominent leader of a Filipino centre in Toronto was caught on TV uttering, “We [the Filipino community] have to show that we are a force to reckon with.”

If this community organization can effectively link up with Filipino social advocacy groups, then there’s no need to replicate organizations that will advance and promote our political stature. Our community leaders need only to re-align their goals with those of the advocacy groups, and put less emphasis on events or activities that portray the image of the Filipino as a mere entertainer or movie or singing idol. With all our striving to be a better version of ourselves here in our adopted land, we seem to have carried over our old habit of putting other cultures above our own. An East Indian boy once asked at a meeting at the Wellesley Community Centre if the Philippines were part of Hawaii. The reason he asked he said was because he has often seen Filipino children and adults perform Hawaiian dances during the Cabbagetown festival. Such is the image many of our community organizations project that not only misleads, but also demeans our identity as a people.

A Filipino community centre that could effectively represent our yearning for a strong Filipino identity in Toronto is the Magkaisa Centre at 1093 Davenport Road. Right now, it is composed of several organizations whose primary aim is to promote the struggle for Filipinos in Canada to achieve equality, human rights and genuine development. It is also in the forefront in the struggle for human rights, national freedom and democracy of the Filipino people. One may not fully agree with Magkaisa’s ideological leaning but it is a collective that fights not only for our community’s integration with the larger Canadian mainstream, but also for our active and purposeful engagement in the Canadian body politic.

We have the right organizations now to advance our political clout. The only item sadly missing is us: the silent majority, the disinterested groups, the comfortable and leisure-driven middle class, the fence-sitters, and those who just don’t care. With our numbers in the GTA, we can be “a force to reckon with” if only we’ll join and support these advocacy groups.

Why not? If a leader of a Filipino community centre could speak during the World Falun Dafa Day (Falun Gong practitioners) celebrations in Queen’s Park last May 13, 2009, right at the time when the “nannygate” controversy was steaming hot, she surely can lend her voice to the more important causes of her fellow Filipinos in Toronto.

Barack Obama perked up the recent U.S. presidential elections with his slogan, “Yes We Can,” and in the process, has helped revitalize the political engagement of the American citizenry in the affairs of their government, not only through voting but also in voluntarism in the civic sector. President Obama is living proof of the success of community organizing; his first contact with the real world after he left college was working as a community organizer for Chicago’s poor and marginalized groups.

For our various advocacy groups and grassroots community organizations, the goal of participating in the centres of political power is achievable. There’s no need for a new organization to accomplish this purpose. All we need to do is to link up our arms together and join in solidarity with one another.

1 comment:

Thanks for this letter from Canada. It is almost the same anywhere-- the U.S., the Middle East, Rome, London, Singapore, Hongkong, Tokyo, Australia, Taipei, mainland China. It reveals a lot of problems traceable to the development of the Filipino culture from the our two colonialization periods interrupted by the second world war.

Ms. Cecilia Diocson is correct the Canadian government tends to be exploitative because most of the Filipinos in the GTA are there for economic reasons. It appears she can not pinpoint the root of the problem.

It is simply this: most of the Filipinos in GTA are there to earn a living OUT OF THE PHILIPPINES because our economic development as a nation is dragged down by money politics. Our predominantly agricultural national economy is controlled by some 450 families

who inherited their wealth. Ergo, we have a sharply divided socio-economic-political people (call it "nation" if you wish). Majority (70%) of our soon-to-hit-the-100million-by-2013 population are driven to diaspora because of lack of employment opportunities here. This also is the root of more serious problem: our LACK OF NATIONALISM. Don't expect any people to be "nationalistic" when their main concern is food or survival!

So scan the whole world for the Filipino successes or Filipinos who made it in politics, then analyze their separate cases. Former Hawaii governor Cayetano was elected into that post because he INTEGRATED INTO THE NATIVE CULTURE. He easily did that BECAUSE HE WAS BORN IN HAWAII (his grandfather was one of the first Filipinos who went to Honolulu in 1904 as sugar plantation workers).

David Valderrama, my 1950 classmate in FEU and a retired Maryland circuit judge is now a Congressman in Maryland because he is an intellectual and it was easy for him to integrate into the American culture.

Diosdado Banatao became a billionaire in California's Silicon Valley because he learned to weave HIS THINKING into the American culture and this age of inforrmation and globalization. But he shuns politics. He is determined to transform his native Pangasinan province into a knowledge valley by providing computers to public schools there. Fortunately I believe he is succeeding.

I have been working with two groups of overseas Filipinos in the U.S. who even publish their own tabloids regularly --and distribute their newspapers FREE but earn their meager incomes by getting advertisements. But their editorial contents are not enlightening nor educating their readers.

Instead they are ENTERTAINING JUST LIKE MOST OF THE NATIONWIDE TV PRIME TIMES WE HAVE HERE. Infotainment and our Filipino entertainment fares--the likes of Wowwowwie, Game Ka Na Ba, The Buzz, Now Na, Eat Bulaga, the Singing Bee, etc. -- are the major IDIOTIZATION factors on the countrywide scale.

So UNTIL the Filipinos, anywhere, learn: 1. that integration --mentally and actually by deeds and accomplishments--is the key to be a socio-economic-political power group anywhere, 2. to forget the local Filipino entertainment/infotainment culture, 3. to find time to educate themselves continuously, daily, and realize that continuing education uplifts people anywhere, specially in this globalization and information age of computers, 4. to internalize that narrow nationalism is self-defeating, they will never amount to any socio-economic-political grouping anywhere.

Hawaiian Senator Inouye once told Tony Dimalanta (an 88-year-old Fil-Am architect-engineer whose professional license in Guam is # 7) in an election campaign in Guam: "It is really amazing to see the number of Filipino community organizations in stamp-sized Guam, based on the dialects and personalities--like the Southern Leyte Organization of Guam, the Leyte Organization of Guam, the Paranaque Organization of Guam, etc. If only the Filipinos here will learn to unite, they can elect their first Filipino governor."